Has anyone picked up the digital copy of the film? I'm curious as to what the deleted scenes are. I know there's an extended scene involving Ender's conversation with Mick as well as a the conversation he has with Dink as to why he never accepted command, but outside of that I have no idea. I'm really curious what these might had added to the final film, especially since Hood recently said that he was disappointed that he had to remove them.

I have not been on pweb in possibly years and that makes me quite sad, however, I thought this was a noteworthy reason to get started back up. I went to the American premiere, and lets just say, I cried multiple times in the movie, and I cried when it was over. I cried, because it was so unbelievably perfect to what I had been wanting, and what I had been longing for from a movie adaptation. Every time I thought of it for hours afterward I'd start tearing up again and feel giddy, and even for days after I'd feel giddy. I knew that it would not include every detail of the book, clearly. I also knew a few things would be changed to suit the movie-goers and that suited me. I was more worried about how it would go from being in Ender's head most of the time (in the book) to on screen. The movie producers and actors and everyone else involved did beautifully. and I must say Asa did wonderfully. The only thing I was displeased with was how little they mentioned the Giant's Game, I thought it to be very important to Ender as well as the storyline itself.

When in need, you must be the savior to your kind. When not, you must conquer and take charge.

Rei and I spent pretty much the whole movie clutching each other and literally shaking with excitement.

Some of the adaptive changes I really approved of. Having Ender in an IF prep school was a very good move. It handily explained how all these children had such automatic military demeanor. Just cut through a lot. Putting Bean in Ender's launch group was sensible. Having the Hive Queen egg on the Eros-cognate was a quick way to wrap it up. Making Bernard part of Ender's jeesh made a lot of sense with the condensed storyline, on a simple narrative basis.

I really loved the genuine affection between Ender and Petra, without it being a romance. I liked Anderson getting a more specific role. I was really let down that Ender said goodbye to Alai without the "salaam" - and then it happened! I was excited at all the minor characters who got bit parts. The Stilson and Bonzo fights were appropriately brutal without being overly graphic. Harrison Ford was perfect. However they talked Hollywood[TM] into having a racially diverse cast, it was worth it. I'm still intensely smug that I called it on Ben Kingsley, and I was actually really happy to have them explain how come he doesn't LOOK Maori (his father was Maori).

I wish there were more time for BS battles and Command School training. It was difficult to get a sense of how hard they were pushing Ender, how broken down he was, but perhaps they will add some more to an extended edition DVD. (Right? RIGHT???) I thought the denoument was a bit weak-sauce, but a minor marring of an otherwise excellent adaptation.

YOU GUYS THEY MADE A MOVIE. WE DIDN'T IMAGINE IT. THEY FINALLY MADE A MOVIE, A REAL ONE. AND IT IS AWESOME.

I agree with all of this pretty much!!

When in need, you must be the savior to your kind. When not, you must conquer and take charge.

I bought the Limited Edition steel case from Target, blew through the special features, and went to watch the movie but it won't play! GRRRR!!! The DVD plays, so I'm not without the movie, but the blu ray won't and I'll have to take it back.

That said...

Gavin Hood said during the deleted/extended scenes commentary that *his* cut was 20 minutes longer at 2 hours and 15 minutes (I'm assuming with credits) but the studio made him trim it down. It's very aggravating, especially as there was some good material in the deleted scenes. We had more Dink and Bonzo, we got to see Fly Molo and MIck, the Lake scene was longer, and Ender's introduction to Battle School was closer to the way it was in the book. I REALLY hope the movie sells well on DVD and Hood can convince Summit/Lionsgate to put out a Director's Cut. The movie would be that much better.

I just got mine from Amazon and can't wait to get home to watch the deleted scenes!!!!

[edit]

a) the deleted scenes were pretty great (though the one with Chamrajnagar was maybe unnecessary), I'm not sure why they weren't included b) If there's really 20 minutes missing, only half of that showed up in the deleted scenes....so what was the rest?

Vermont Sustainable Heating Initiative"But the conversation of the mind was truer than any language, and they knew each other better than they ever could have by use of mere sight and touch."

They were probably cut really early in the process. The scenes on the DVD/Blu Ray were relatively close to being finished and were likely cut near the end of the process. I'd agree with you that most of the scenes between the adults should have been cut, but I really wish they would have included the extended goodbye scene, the mess hall scene with Bonzo and Mick, Ender's counting, the scene with Dink, and of course the extended lake scene. The movie would have breathed a little more and wouldn't have felt so rushed. But at least this way we can blame the evil studio and not the writer/director.

As someone who eats, sleeps, and breathes binary, I was curious how far they'd push Ender's doubling. Would have sold the "genius" a little harder if he'd pushed up to around 2^25 without dropping any digits. On a good day and with a little discipline I can get up to 2^22 before I can't keep track, so I was sad that they had him fall asleep around 2^17 - (2^16 and below are reflexive, I memorized them when I was 6 or 7).

Vermont Sustainable Heating Initiative"But the conversation of the mind was truer than any language, and they knew each other better than they ever could have by use of mere sight and touch."

elfprince13 wrote:I just got mine from Amazon and can't wait to get home to watch the deleted scenes!!!!

[edit]

a) the deleted scenes were pretty great (though the one with Chamrajnagar was maybe unnecessary), I'm not sure why they weren't included b) If there's really 20 minutes missing, only half of that showed up in the deleted scenes....so what was the rest?

Sometimes you just shorten the scene and the 'deleted scene' is just an extension/longer version, that's pretty common.

Scene deletions are only some of the time outright deletions. Often you cannot just lift out a complete scene and everything is golden. So what do you do? A scene has to come out but if it comes out it wrecks the overall coherence?

You do what's called a cheat. You take elements from a deleted scene and rework them into another scene. Sometimes this is playing dialogue from the deleted scene over the back of someone's head, sometimes this is new ADR recorded near the end of the edit to bridge scenes that had a crucial deletion, sometimes this is working shots or bits and pieces into another scene or montage sequence.

So scenes that have been deleted may well have been more or less intact in the shorter cut in a myriad of other forms. that would account for some of the missing time. Or some of the scenes are pretty bad and the director or studio don't want to show them and embarrass themselves. or they had a limited home video budget and couldn't make the deleted scenes look acceptable and didn't want to put them out in a subpar format. And when there are thousands of edits in a film, sometimes you do a sweat, you go through and you shave frames off each cut, and in the process of sweating a thousand cuts, you save time, 1 frame off a thousand edits saves you nearly a minute. Directors very typically make a cut that is too long simply from holding shots a second or half second longer than they need to establish mood. As you watch it back a thousand times, you trim those seconds and half seconds away, or find new ways to transition a scene that discards seconds of establishing shots. You can easily drop five minutes just by cleaning up the director's tendencies to hold shots too long or use too many establishing shots. and that would never count as deleted scenes because you've just cut a half second of an unopened door, or you've cut a three second establishing shot exterior. Not a deleted scene just a shorter shot or a dropped shot.

So, Lone Star, now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb.

When I first saw Ender's Game, I didn't really have a problem with the film. And I continued not having a problem with it until I re-watched it in my drama class in school.

To keep it short, Petra(well more like the actress) annoyed me. Like I feel as if Hailee Steinfeld in general is too sweet and warm for the role of Petra. I like Hailee, its just the role doesn't fit her. Or maybe I'm being a little too harsh and critical because well, look at my name. And don't get me started on how lazy the last 15, 20 minutes just seems to me now.

The rest of the movie is okay, its just those 2 things. Though some of the dialogue was a little forced but I find that in every film that I see.

But the shots are so damn STATIC. A bunch of talking heads in FAR too many scenes. Ender in center screen. Petra in center screen. Graff in center screen. I feel like I'm watching a drug ad on TV (no...scratch that. They have more mobile cameras).

Ender walking away from Alai in the hallway...static camera. Hood had the chance--repeatedly--to move the camera through the Battle School. Follow the curve of the floor. Nothing. Never. He holds it still, time and time again. Then, cut to a MCU of the character, talking, their head dead-center and static in the middle of the screen.

The sequence of Salamander army, marching through the hallways.....up the curve, make a left, up ANOTHER curve, make a left...and they're at the center line? Really? Would it have been a problem in "It's a Wonderful Life" if George Bailey walked up the stairs at his house, to find himself in the main floor kitchen? Geography means something. Architecture means something. A given doorway leading into a given room means something. But not to Gavin Hood.

(BTW, two curved hallways at right angles to each other describe a sphere, not a cylinder. So, even MORE fail)

My daughter watched it with me a few weeks ago. I had to fight with her to get her to do it. She really didn't want to. She had heard me talk about it; she had seen the ads on TV and in the theaters. And she was right, because I was right. Asa Butterfield can't act. His performance is shallow and emotionless. Oh, yeah--at the climax, he certainly EMOTES. He yells and he cries. But he can't act. Can't act for sh1t, really. I've chosen performers; I've directed plays. My daughter acted in and directed plays throughout High School, and then she went to college for theater production. She knows this stuff, knows it better than I do.

But because Asa Butterfield has no depth, Ender has no depth (not for a SECOND did I think the character had any brains at all, except for the scene when he and Mazer "review the tapes.") There is no psychological depth to the film. A school full of the best and brightest? Did anyone here believe that, other than that's what the exposition told us to believe?

Oh, and the promise of Gavin Hood being able to bring the horror of "children warriors" to the screen? I looked for it, I listened...it's not there. Maybe one or two sentences from Anderson, just before she quits, but nope; not really.

Plus I noticed a few more things:

1) When the launchies come up out of that manhole cover, from the shuttle? Wonderful camera move, one would think--the camera spins on its axis to introduce the scene. I thought so too. At first. Watch it again. The launchies walk past Graff and Anderson, the camera turns and follows them...and you see it: the corridor curves up. The camera "spin axis" was tangential to the circumference of the corridor. It was orthogonal to the Battle School habitation module spin axis. Again: the layout of the Battle School means nothing to Gavin Hood. He could care less. More than likely, he just doesn't get it.

2) Just how many adults does it take to run the Battle School? I counted four: Graff, Anderson, Dap, and some other guy in the background. Also: how many cars on earth? Except for the "First Invasion" scenes, I counted one. Graff's Audi. And then he carelessly leaves int on the launchpad, right in the path of the shuttle's exhaust plume, when the shuttle to the Battle School takes off. But it's miraculously back again when he returns! He must have owned the only OTHER car on earth. Look at the street in front of Ender's house. No cars, save for Graff's. Maybe there was an old Ford pickup, off in the distance in a long shot. Sorry, but try as I might to convince myself, "It's a socio-economic statement!," or "maybe the Formics destroyed them ALL!," I can't. It's laziness. It's lack of imagination.

And, try as I might to enjoy the two times they use "The enemy's gate is down," I can't. Gavin Hood totally bungles it. Doesn't give it any importance. Parrots it to the fan base, but without any substance or meaning. No set-up. No payoff. It's a toss-away line.

I asked my daughter if she agreed with this next statement, and she does; 100%: "The Goonies" is a better movie than "Ender's Game." The Goonies takes multiple strong characters in a ensemble cast (and children, too!), places them in a very odd series of situations that require a lot of exposition and explanation, has lots of mini-adventures and challenges thrown in, has some fancy special effects, shows enough of an "adult world" where we feel like we're watching a real situation, and does a great job with it. Ender's Game? Not so much. And the running time for both films IS EXACTLY THE SAME. 114 minutes.

(If you were wondering why I haven't been on the site in a while...this is why. Fear of the above, God-awful rant just bottled up inside of me, waiting to vomit out of my mind, my hands, my fingers, through the keyboard and up onto your screens)

--Boothby

"The biggest cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid people are so sure about things and the intelligent folks are so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell

Boothby wrote:By s****, do you mean "The Hobbit"? Also known as "To the Till and Back Again. And Again. And Again"?

(BTW, when I received the notification of your response, via e-mail, the naughty word you used was uncensored! I find this...amusing)

I mean everything Middle Earth related that he's been involved with, except for Fellowship, which was passable. The shocking thing with the Hobbit isn't that he's turned it into 3 films, it's that he's turned it into 3 films AND STILL LEFT OUT OR MUTILATED THE GOOD STUFF.

Vermont Sustainable Heating Initiative"But the conversation of the mind was truer than any language, and they knew each other better than they ever could have by use of mere sight and touch."

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks the same on this thread. I remember when the film first came out, I kept on talking about the film with my science teacher. I talked about the good and the minor faults that never really botheted me until now. It convinced him to watch the movie (online mind you) and to be frank, he hated it. He's glad he didn't waste his money on it. He was curious how it compared to the book, so he read the book, again being frank, in reading the book, it made him hate the film even more. For the same reasons you stated. He hated every single character, even Ender. He was mad after he read the book because they watered down or cut out all his favorite characters, for example Dink and Crazy Tom. He called BS towards the end of the film when Ender found the egg 2 kilometers from the station and dislike how they tried to put a sly love interest between Ender and Petra, especially when neither actor has good chemistry with one another on screen. He was just not happy with the film.

Even my younger brother and father, who even took a trip to London to see the film a week before it came out in the US, their good opinion about the film as changed and wished they had put their money to better use.

I forgave him in "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," since he was only 10 years old. I never really cared about his character, which for that movie in particular is critical.

In "Hugo," he was horrible. Really, he was. I loved the film, in SPITE of his shallow performance. And his "on screen chemistry" with Chloë Grace Moretz? Non-existent. He did get to act against Ben Kingsley, though!

I have NOT watched "Merlin," nor do I plan to. I watched part of the first "Nanny McPhee" movie--it was so bad (he wasn't in that one) that I turned it off and returned it before I was 1/3 of the way in. So I won't be watching the second one.

You can bet how disappointed I was to hear that both Asa Butterfield and Hailee Steinfeld are going to in another adaptation of one of favorite novels...this time for sure as love interests. I'm not even going to think about going to watch this movie. I can tell its going to be a major disappointment, so why even bother?

Boothby wrote:The more I watch this movie, the less and less I like it.

My daughter watched it with me a few weeks ago. I had to fight with her to get her to do it. She really didn't want to. She had heard me talk about it; she had seen the ads on TV and in the theaters. And she was right, because I was right. Asa Butterfield can't act. His performance is shallow and emotionless. Oh, yeah--at the climax, he certainly EMOTES. He yells and he cries. But he can't act. Can't act for sh1t, really. I've chosen performers; I've directed plays. My daughter acted in and directed plays throughout High School, and then she went to college for theater production. She knows this stuff, knows it better than I do.

I asked my daughter if she agreed with this next statement, and she does; 100%: "The Goonies" is a better movie than "Ender's Game." The Goonies takes multiple strong characters in a ensemble cast (and children, too!), places them in a very odd series of situations that require a lot of exposition and explanation, has lots of mini-adventures and challenges thrown in, has some fancy special effects, shows enough of an "adult world" where we feel like we're watching a real situation, and does a great job with it. Ender's Game? Not so much. And the running time for both films IS EXACTLY THE SAME. 114 minutes.

I had to respond to this post, Booth, because of the utter ridiculousness of these two sections of your post. I for one thought Asa did a fantastic job, but that's only my opinion, and my opinion doesn't have any more weight than any other viewer. Saying your daughter agrees with you, and using her high school theater background as evidence is ridiculous. I wrote and directed an award-winning feature length film, and yet my opinion still doesn't have any more weight. I went through casting. I went through rehearsals and script revisions. I went through production and post production. I went through test screenings, more test screenings, and even more test screenings. I tweaked, removed, and tweaked again, all to find the right pace, beats, and authenticity. I premiered at an international film festival with over 410 films in attendance and won one of their Top 5 awards. I leveraged that film into commercial work, marketing work, and music videos where I went through more casting, rehearsals, and screenings, and still, none of this matters because my opinion is still just that. An opinion. And my limited background in film, like your daughters limited background in theater (which I have to add, is a very, very, VERY different form of acting), doesn't change anything.

It's perfectly alright to have strong opinions about the movie--we all do, but I think you're going overboard. And this is coming from someone who's been on these boards, hell, dating back to the Fresco boards, for as long as you. So take a chill pill, and appreciate the movie for what it is, not what it isn't, because no matter how much complaining you do, it'll never change.

And I also DO value a person's experience with regard to their opinions. I do not believe that "all opinions are the same." A person with NO experience selecting or directing actors--or being an actor--is just not going to have the awareness or the language, necessarily, to perceive, understand, and describe a performance. I have some, my daughter has more, and it would seem that you have more than that. To say that "all opinions are the same" is to devalue that knowledge and experience, and that pretty much leads to FOX News, and idiots being given as much credence as experts.

I will also say that I am a little envious, but still happy for you that you've gotten into that business! And congratulations on that award. What was the name of the film, if I may ask?

But back to Asa. Have you seen "Hugo"? I'd be interested in what your opinion of his performance is in that film. It could very well be that my daughter and I are calibrated similarly (understandable enough), and that you and I are calibrated quite differently as to what makes a good on-screen (or on-stage) performance.

--Boothby

"The biggest cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid people are so sure about things and the intelligent folks are so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell

I love watching movies but I am not very frequent. Recently I have watched the movie Frozen and I like the Ciaran Hinds. I didn't know him before but I realized his charm few days back when I saw his name on one of the name related site babynology.com.